Sonos and HDTV
October 4, 2011 4:08 PM   Subscribe

How does HDTV output sound on Sonos speakers? I only see an analog in on the back of the speaker set. I am thinking about using an S5 as the primary speakers in my medium sized living room. Is the quality going to bug me? Is there a reason no reviews at all mention doing this? I use an AppleTV and Uverse on my Samsung, if that matters.
posted by aburd to Technology (8 answers total)
 
Your TV should have 2 channel output via white/red RCAs. Just get the appropriate cable to hookup.
posted by wongcorgi at 4:58 PM on October 4, 2011


AppleTV can get the audio to the SONOS speakers via Airplay, no cables required (except to your router).
posted by empath at 5:02 PM on October 4, 2011


Best answer: It'll only be stereo, rather than the 5.1 or 7.1 you can get off many HDTV signals, but it should sound fine within that limitation.

If you want true multichannel sound, you're going to need a receiver of some kind, and probably new speakers; I haven't used a Sonos, but it's quite common for 'turnkey solutions' like that to use completely nonstandard parts and connections. (Bose is particularly bad about this, but many Home Theater In A Box setups do the same thing.)

The Sonos will probably send the stereo signal to all its speakers, so you can probably fill the room with sound, but it won't be discrete channels, just multiplying the basic stereo signal across however many speakers you have.
posted by Malor at 7:15 PM on October 4, 2011


Best answer: Oh, and from what I can tell, the Airplay setup empath mentions is just using an Airport Express as your stereo out source instead of your Apple TV. It'll still be stereo, and you still run an analog cable from the out of the Apple gear to the in of the Sonos... all Airplay does is change which device is driving the Sonos.

Basically, instead of:

AppleTV -> stereo cable -> Sonos

it'll be:

AppleTV --- wireless connection to Airport Express somewhere in your house -> stereo cable -> Sonos
posted by Malor at 7:20 PM on October 4, 2011


That's actually not my understanding of how Sonos works. It supports airplay natively, you don't need to use the stereo in.
posted by empath at 8:23 PM on October 4, 2011


Response by poster: With AirPlay, I would only be able to listen to iTunes and Netflix content. My uverse package would basically just go through the tv speakers. Unless there is something else I don't understand.
posted by aburd at 8:20 AM on October 5, 2011


The Sonos Play5 has a 1/8" stereo input jack, so if you have RCA cables on your TV or cablebox, you'll be fine.

You can't really mix Sonos driven speakers and not (like if you wanted to listen to the TV's speakers at the same time). There's a lag introduced by the Sonos mesh network that makes this not really work well.

Sonos does not support airplay directly. Malor is correct that you would need to use an Airport Express to output audio to the Sonos. There's no way to directly connect the AppleTV to the Sonos.

I really recommend going to the Sonos forums and asking your question there. I'm sure they'll give you good info.

Can I ask why you want Sonos? Are you interested in using them for the music playback and multi-room features, or do you just want them to output audio from your TV? If the latter, then you may want to look into just getting a soundbar, which won't be as complicated.
posted by reddot at 3:58 PM on October 8, 2011


Response by poster: I know this response is late, but I want both home theater and modular. I like the interface and I like that it integrates easily with a lot of the music services I love, but I don't want two sets of speakers un my living room.
posted by aburd at 1:51 PM on October 18, 2011


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